scott-martin

Shannon "with help from Greg" claimed in Tradetalk 4 that Morbode was located in Old Rinliddi but ambitious Kethaelan darkness worshippers are unlikely to be able to access this information . . . for a few years now I've just assumed that the site's whereabouts became a state secret in the Holy Country after the general suppression of OOO heroform paths and so is carefully expunged from all available texts. They probably know more about it in Halikiv (and IMG ancestral Spol) but for some reason people rarely go there. Either way, AA's primeval wandering may conceal a secret of Gloranthan prehistory. Or not!

is to as is to

Tolat!

It does look like a deeper challenge. My initial thought was that the god's regalia has changed Since Time to conform with various religious reforms and prophetic encounters. In this model, the Shreds version might be relatively archaic or even refer to an outdated conception of the god (could be "Alkor," for example) and then at some point the relatively fancy little man at I-5 took over within the broader empire with his purple and gold. The red demon would be another view entirely, either "hostile" (outside Alkoth) or "esoteric" (the mysteries deep inside Alkoth). And the only images from the Cults book I've seen so far are the feathered version and what looks like a later Carmanized (European style) coronet. There might be something more "official" waiting for us but for now I wonder if the people in charge of the larger Dara Happan iconography have done their best to deprecate all the "city crowns" potential Yelm rivals were once depicted as wearing . . . and so in the terminal seventh wane the question of how you depict a free and independent Shargash just never comes up until someone in your game forces an answer.

Oh Sten, you wound me. This is still my Glorantha: Maybe that's been erased (all I have on hand is the older books) but if so, it runs the risk of being erased again in the ever-evolving pursuit of MGF. I have to look at what the books show me as well as what they tell me. I must be wrong. I like the harvest feast as sacrificial communal rite, but the scenario you paint strikes me as more of a protection racket than a spell. IMG the priestess casts Worship and all initiates kick in all their magic points but one. The earth mothers also collect their 5% cut as my material sacrifice. We eat. The sickles don't get any better unless they also teach me Bladesharp at the festival (presumably Barntar handles this); I still need to rely on my own householder skills to do the actual reaping. Keeping in mind that there are listed spells that people can sacrifice in order to handle eating plants, butchering meat, extra-fancy feats of craft (ritual enchantments), sowing (if Bless Crops and Bear Fruit happen at the start of the crop year), conception, gestation, couvade and supernaturally effective plowing (as opposed to the baseline for people who don't take the spell), am I missing a spell associated with the reaping? Does Bless Crops come at the end of the crop year and that's what the harvest feast is really all about? Can Bless Crops be applied at any time of year? How do people handle this in their Gloranthas? I'm not finding a reference. Again, I like the vision of the sacred universe, but as I'll pester Jörg about later, what I get from the older books and the newer character sheets is a world where we're told a lot about how everything is numinous (a spectacular animistic vision) and then shown a lot of day-to-day work where no magic points are actually transacted. Adventurers do not burn magic points in the course of their "everyday" lives, do they? I would hope not. But I must be reading the wrong books.

Before the communal heroquest (holy day, sacrifice, spell, song, dance) we in the runequest roll our chop wood and carry water skills, grubbing for pants that fit and clacks to pay the bar bill. After the communal heroquest, we roll the skills again. EGWV.

Where's the harvest spell? How many player characters use it every year? The Grain Goddesses teach Bless Crops and Barntar teaches Plow for the sowing but does Ernalda support her own unrecorded version of Food Song on the other end of the cycle? My Glorantha has evolved as a response to the game as it is played and the world as it is currently described. The "urban Sartarites" aren't professional fighters. They're not farmers either. They rely on Orlanth and Ernalda for the spells and the identity Orlanth and Ernalda support and work a shop or a service occupation between temple days. They buy bread baked in one shop that buys flour milled in a second location and sourced from multiple fields, some of which observe the conventional Bless Crops rites and some of which might have other loyalties. Up in the hills, life is still older and different. That's okay. I prefer your vision but it requires different play and different description, let's make that happen! Is there a Glorantha that runs everything on spells with no skill checks? Is this . . . animism?

Isn't this "the Jagekriand weapon" or northern thunderbolt I see on all the lightning chariots these days? Maybe the imperial problem with Orlanth is that they're really talking about a vestige of sinister Tarumath too recalcitrant to assimilate and too stubborn to die in the dawn wars. That's who they were hoping to kill down in the south. And the moon turns. Related: Derek Jarman once made the observation (illuminating to me at least) that "brown" is only an opaque orange, an orange that no longer emits light. This feels like it has strange bearing on the elf-on-elf religious wars, with their original orange gods hardening into a new relationship with death as alien to the green establishment as to hapless meat chroniclers.

I think you've uncovered the secret origin of the infamous blue moon self-resurrection rites here . . . and maybe an obscure bit of Rocky & Bullwinkle animation. When someone at home in the underworld wants to go to the surface, all you really need to do is recapitulate the exile and dig your way back out. Or if you're not strong enough to do all that digging, exit via the Crack. The irony of course is that most trolls probably avoid this easy short cut because they're finally back in underheaven and can rest awhile in their version of peace. But wily humans who get access to this lore can come back again and again.

Love it! Looking at the weekly cycles, I'm starting to suspect the sages who translated the calendar actually got it backward (the Godtime year began in the ruin of spirit and ended in the wisdom of silence) but it's more likely that their Kralorelan informants gave them this version for their own reasons. The Ignorant might openly proclaim the reverse version and the fact that it goes widdershins actually makes it more appealing to them. The 6 x 7 x 7 layout would generate an incomplete set of power "trigrams" (combinations only, one western power is not used so you have seven radicals to start with, no doubles or triples) but without additional insight into their court magic I don't know how exactly they stack the radicals or whether each week has a fixed trigram or something the oracles dynamically assign. Probably all have been true in the Gloranthan past and all will get their curtain call in the hero wars.

You simply have to translate "god learning" as θεοσοφῐ́ᾱ to take the mellow "sober" way . . . or for the inebriated (BLVTRSKY) route superimpose Man Rune onto the elemental pentagram like the cool kids and the rare unreconstructed/naive ZZBR precipitates as a fresh-faced enfant terrible. There might also be a third ferlie where you and I are not necessarily going today because only the bonnie brown man knows. I wonder what they have in Kralorela instead of an equivalent to the LBQ/7MQ/zzaburquest. Maybe they just don't think they need one.

There's a full-page picture of the god of Alkoth in Shreds of Light and Reason that might be inspirational for more than just headwear: He will be portrayed in the upcoming Cults book. I don't recall any official share of those images but "the odds are good" that the iconography remains largely intact . . . a fairly tight cap with an ornamental coronet with an orb suspended up top to identify him with his planet. However, the version seen here seems to be archaic. Modern Shargash seems to lose the projecting "horns" that support the orb and instead has feathers or fronds . . . possibly a later infusion from Tolat.

I love it. The usual suspects are unlikely: Dara Happa still resists the five-element model, opting to either stick with four or sublimate straight to "six" without making space for the air. The archaic west struggled to fit its more fragmented elemental system (best embodied in the alchemical metals, including "zrethus" and "uleria" as well as the problem with quicksilver) into the five-element model. Pamalt simply doesn't seem to care because every entity is an individual with a name and personality . . . and not so much a representative of a larger state of matter. A vithelan origin hypothesis would also be really useful for giving us at least two somewhat overlapping primal magic frameworks there: the binary calculator that generates something like hexagrams out of the fundamental eight power situations, and the mutual generation / mutual overcoming matrix of the elements. The tension between these frameworks in turn generates their history or whatever they have there.

IMG there are skill secrets and spell secrets. We know they both exist because they inhabit different zones of the character sheet and rely on different progression mechanics. "Guilds" teach skills without direct interaction with a spirit or a god. In theory, practical experience makes you better and can even unlock technical innovations that you can then choose whether you want to share with others. Under normal circumstances, your expertise remains with you for life. Because technical skills do not have independent existence outside people's heads, they can be lost (and will need to be rediscovered) if not passed on. "Cults" teach spells that are the property of the tutelary spirit or god. You don't need to practice and you don't need anyone to show you the tricks. All you need is the right relationship with the entity that supports the spell. And finally, casting a craft spell over and over doesn't make you better at the craft. If you leave the cult and lose the spell, the expertise was never yours, so it's gone. In what we like to consider modern Orlanth society, craft "spells" have atrophied since the dawn into a scattered body of specialized augments that make skill use more efficient in some way: faster, reduced material or labor inputs, fewer fumbles, whatever. What they all have in common is that they're "extra" . . . procedures that someone stacks on top of a skill in order to get incrementally better results. You spend the same day in the workshop either way. Most of the time you shovel charcoal into a furnace and the metal gets hot or the pots get fired or whatever. The next day, you reload the furnace and do it again. Sometimes you really want it to work so you do a special dance when the stars are right and wear your lucky socks. As long as you keep getting appreciably better results, you keep using the spell alongside your skill. And as the collective library of technical expertise grows, the spells recede further into the background. Maybe once upon a time spells did most of the work and you were largely a passive observer of what the gods and spirits created for you. Now gods and spirits who are only worshipped to provide craft augments get pushed into the background. They become increasingly obscure. Maybe once upon a time everyone who wanted to weave a basket needed to sacrifice to Baskamenta. Now you just keep the rushes moving day by day and once in a great while you bring in a spell to help make sure a wedding or other ceremonial function gets all the special stuff it needs. The higher your skill and the more advanced your physical plant, the less you need the augments. Within modern Sartar, the role of the "cult" shifts from facilitating the material basics that sustain human existence to providing answers to bigger questions: who are we, where do we go when we die, how do we perpetuate the work of creation or not. This is where spells that do things we would truly consider supernatural persist . . . the deep secrets of souls and bodies, powers and elements, energy and matter. Miracles. Once upon a time there was a little goddess of changing diapers and another one who knew about yarn and a third who wove the baskets. Those fragmented situational identities and their specialized techniques converged into a consolidated Ernalda, a way to be a well-rounded adult human who can do a lot of things and can always learn more. Others became a consolidated Orlanth, a different way to live, a different route to consciousness. The process may not be done yet, but for now, these are the two main ways of being human in modern Sartar. You don't need to be a professional fighter to perform the Orlanth mysteries. You can have just about any job. But your soul belongs to a god who supports a catalog of mysteries that go beyond your day-to-day occupation. Now the skill-driven "guild" system runs up against both sorcery and the western / mostal caste ideology in obvious ways. Maybe that's the future of Gloranthan humanity and maybe it's the past. I like to think unbundling technical knowledge as the secular skills frees up room in the soul for the important business, but that's just me. And of course other cultures are different. In Dara Happa most workers are cut off from the high mysteries (no individual initiation) and their identity revolves around job associations, family, other secular pillars or the Lunar Way. In deep Pamalt country everything might still be handled on transactional animist "spell" terms where we give a spirit of the basket (!) the body today and when we come back the spirit has made us that basket we needed. Who really knows what they have in Kralorela these days. I do love the notion that coinage is literally the medium for this historical exchange. When production and consumption are both within the home (or slightly larger commune) then these are wyter functions . . . the spirit of the stead is circulating, feeding and being fed in return. Once a pot of spare grain gets alienated from that primal scene, the world changes. "Magic" isn't necessarily diminished, although this is the dangerous moment through which the old gods can be silenced if things go in that direction. Luckily there is a god at the crossroads who can negotiate these situations.

There's a lot in this thread but the thought that these people may actually be an elite corps of Pralorite serpent brotherhood is too tempting to ignore.

Moving to the other thread to avoid stinking things up here. And timeshifting it since this will require at least a brief search of the lower stacks so we can really talk about the spider . . . and technically I have yet to close the markets for the week. Tomorrow and tomorrow. But I think it's not so bad.

Is this not an imperfectly screened recollection of the Dora mysteries?

All right, Lacan. Let's go. The most archaic published version of the LBQ we have (RQ2, expanded for Cults of Prax) is oedipal / adolescent / adventurous, making no mention of the god being married at all . . . no bride rivalry, zero cult association with "Ernalda" (this is reserved at this stage for the Bull), and only the "sweet green woman" obligation on wind lords even hints at any kind of courtship. She just isn't there. Instead the motivation for the quest is generational: the Big O (we have come to terms) sets out to redeem his parents from the literal sins of the fathers and the crimes perpetuated on the mothers. We could be forgiven for reading this version of the myth as being experienced "before" the O+E hierogamy was established at all, either developmentally in terms of the characters or historically in terms of the way the cults have evolved within Time. This is also the version that prevailed before the once-open signifier "Ginna Jar" was fixed . . . whoever compiled Cults of Prax (Biturian Varosh himself?) either thinks they're proposing a revolutionary new hypothesis by equating this figure with both ghost Glorantha and the living Arachne Solara or is too coy (ritually constrained) to simply assert it as fact. Either scenario is interesting. However, Ernalda remains neither absent nor present but simply not considered relevant at this stage. She isn't a factor. It isn't her story. If I recall correctly, this is the status quo in the somewhat fragmentary Harmast materials we have. Harmast is no stranger to women and how to satisfy their mythic prerogatives, but his quest isn't what I'd call a romantic rescue mission and there's no shadowy female figure pulling the strings. By the time you get back to Cults of Prax, the ginna jar only appears at the brink of the world and is sometimes even a dude. I spent decades working with the ginna jar as a sort of moveable ritual feast or sliding symbol that could be redefined to fit personal circumstances. This was "the crack" in the system that "lets the light get in," to quote one of our airplane crews in recent weeks. It was how the cosmos, broken or otherwise, somehow manages to ensure that a sufficiently advanced quest team "gets what it needs." The handshake of the sign. And that worked for a few decades. But the sign itself cried out for a handshake and smart people worked really hard to fix the open signifier. The Cults of Prax compiler is part of this process. Some time between that book (1615-7?) and the Gloranthan now, people decided to promulgate the identification of the "ghost" in the ginna jar machine with Ernalda, and from there since the ghost is also the spider it's a short associative hop to identify Ernalda with the cosmic spider. This is okay. Signs are by their nature always opening and closing. Belintar or some more contemporary "pseudo-Belintar" is right to make these associations as long as they get you where you need to go. Maybe before the seasonal narrative of Ernalda was a separate entity, neither absent nor present nor relevant to the LBQ. At a certain point she steps in to fill the deliberately empty sign. We can read this as adventurous growing up a little. Or we can shake off a "false" close, stay on the quest and see where it ultimately takes us. As mentioned up thread, I'm thrilled to see the earth complex get some agency, even if it's topping from the bottom. What are the politics at stake? "Glorantha" is the cosmic mother favored among the Pelorians. Ripping her name out of the weave is probably a priority in the wake of the Red Earth schism. The spider's cult center is local to Dragon Pass so it's harder to cut her. But you can insert the local rival to the cosmic mother and see if everything holds together . . . a sort of new age goddess switch as it were.

Upon more careful consideration, knowing that the table implement we call the "fork" will not be introduced to Glorantha until the early Sixth Age, I think this is actually a mask of the Lodril plow. We call it "truth" and hand it to the father-and-sun gods but its real master remains the primal paterfamilias, the absent ancient of days. And here is the mask of the other plow: Yes, they are both forks that assist in symbolic cannibal feasts. But the application and the yields are very different to the point that the etiquette almost completely changes.

Only '90s kids know. Arguably there is always something funky lurking just below the surface of the rye . . . some purple grain attached to a grain goddess whose name is a secret, some fungus or amaranth or whatever is better to think and worse to eat. Which is IMG where a lot of this fairly recent transcendental Ernalda theology is coming from. In archaic times, she was largely just an earth goddess. More lately, she's consolidated a lot of the high magic that runs the world. That's okay. The once-cosmic spider gets smaller as the (mid)wife gets bigger. And so it goes! If I recall correctly the big reveal on spider woman comes around the point where Greg is talking about his mom and his first marriage. But he changed. The world changed. One of the things that still excites me is the notion that someone will step up and explore all of this with the same passion and focus that others have thrown into the Orlanth cult over the years. It might still happen but it better not be me in drag.

Yeah, the market is almost in a place where I can engage with this seriously. But if ZZ is the mother and XU is the midwife, the baby in this parthenogenetic system must be the Curse, right? Who is KL, the goddess of the blasted people forced to the surface to confront Time as she herself was pushed forward to interact with the Man Rune. So we have: Who is missing? All the Orlanths . . . and all of Ernalda's children, for that matter. When is a mother goddess not a mother goddess? When it's another goddess who is the mother goddess. Unless of course someone is present here in disguise or has been reborn to atone for past mistakes. Rashoran. The Third Eye, which might be open at the top of the skull or down in the perineum country. Three others found that they were not afraid, and that they could use the fears of others to their own ends. One of the first things they did was to destroy Rashoran to keep his secret to themselves. To the extent to which "Humakt" and "Uleria" (another dyad, phallic cigar and primal cup, although he was nobody before he murdered his shadowy predecessor or "grandfather," sound familiar?) learned the lesson, they were "fortified" and are not chaotic today. Uleria could easily have become a mother of abominations, probably is in some corners of the lozenge. Trolls care about chaos and love Humakt. Maybe modern Orlanth falls under that protective shadow . . . past crimes unseen.

Now as a human-presenting Ernalda takes over as holder of the skein from the atavistic + at best ambivalent spider woman, what happens?

Greg has written at length about his troubled relationship with the spider mother, let me see if I can find it unless someone has it at hand. "We" tend to imagine her benign for some reason, perhaps reaction formation on display.

Now word of god IMG. The relationship between Basko or the shadow-of-the-sun, more conventional trolls and whatever they actually do up there on the wild Koromandol coast remains to be explored by those willing to brave that clearly vaginal "pedipalp" standard. As we know, "documents and oral memories from storm, darkness, and earth cults" converge around the conspiracy of chaos that hatches the devil. And yet here we have an ernalda operating in a different triple act, assisting / facilitating a different birth. Maybe for some people the real devil was time. Maybe for some people the handmaid or "mistress" or midwife isn't the transcendental figure they've developed in Dragon Pass while a dark-derived bug goddess takes the central role. For that matter the two dads may or may not be the same figure in different phases of his career or seen from different perspectives. But this is probably veering into the dumb theory zone.

hey @Noirfatale thanks for being here. it is good information for us if you would like to continue posting your impressions of the book here as you read.